It happened about two years ago, just around the time Long Beach resident Kirk Jordan decided to take a break from teaching and get back into his passion: music.

The guitar player and singer was in his garage when the garage door broke and suddenly came crashing down. In an attempt to stop it, Jordan reached out and got his left ring finger caught between the door panels.

The top of his finger had been cut off.

“As a guitar player, that’s a really important finger. Your ring finger on your left hand is the one you use to bend notes. So I was bummed and depressed for a long time. I didn’t even pick up a guitar for a year, because I thought it was over,” said the bespectacled former third-grade teacher, who gives his age as “somewhere between Miley Cyrus and Madonna.”

But after grunge music killed his chances for a record deal years before, he wasn’t going to let a missing finger stop him from playing the guitar.

Besides, it had happened before. Yes, it was the second time Jordan lost part of a finger.

But with a glass half-full attitude, he has not let these accidents slow down his musical dreams.

In fact, the mishaps even inspired his stage name.

On Feb. 12, Jordan, who performs as 8 Good Fingers, will debut his self-released EP “Sensible Shoes,” with an acoustic show at Fingerprints Records in Long Beach.

“I think his record sounds great,” said Fingerprints owner Rand Foster. “It has an awareness and a nod back to that golden era of pop radio: the really early days of KROQ, Elvis Costello and Squeeze, music that was fun.”

The four-song pop/rock EP, on Jordan’s own Big Peach Records, will be on sale at Fingerprints, Amoeba Records in Hollywood and CDBaby.com.

The EP mixes a feel-good rock and power pop vibe with witty lyrics and a strong singing voice. It’s also reflective of his humor and the optimistic attitude that lead to his band name.

Jordan said the name “just popped into my head one day.”

“I guess I was just looking down at my hands, and it just popped into my head, and I thought that would be funny,” he said.

His love of music began at an early age while growing up in South Dakota.

“I was attached to the stereo from a very, very young age,” he said.

He grew up listening to Elton John, ABBA and Led Zeppelin and picked up the guitar at the age of 9. But before that, he had his first finger accident.

It happened when he was 2, and his mother was putting away a sofa bed.

She didn’t notice his hand stuck in the bed and when she folded it back in it cut off the end of his right index finger.

Despite his sliced finger, Jordan continued to play music in bands during high school and college. He played coffeehouses and clubs when he moved to L.A. and was eventually noticed by Geffen Records, which offered him a development deal.

But it was just as grunge music, with its dark angst-driven sound, was starting to dominate the music scene, so Jordan’s feel-good pop songs just didn’t cut it at the time.

“I’m more of a kind of a happy singer-songwriter guy,” he recalled, “and I just didn’t fit in.”

So Jordan fell into teaching, first as a substitute, then as a full-time teacher.

That career lasted for about 15 years until he decided to leave teaching and return to music again.

But the accident in his garage threw a wrench into his plans.

“I was moping about (after the second accident),” Jordan said. “I lost this finger; that’s tough for a guitar player.

“I had this sit-down and my wife said, ‘You need to get back on the horse,’ ” he added. “So I started playing guitar again; I had to relearn the stuff because my finger wasn’t as long as it used to be. And then at the same time, I decided to do an album.”

Jordan wrote, produced and recorded his new EP in his Long Beach home studio. The title track, “Sensible Shoes,” is a catchy tune that’s not about footwear at all.

“It’s a metaphor for looking at life and not being so kind of uptight,” he said. “To relax a little bit. Instead of wearing these tight high heels, put on some sensible shoes.”

Other standouts include “Susan’s Way,” which tells the tale of an ex-girlfriend who wanted things her way.

“I think he’s a great songwriter, and he has a great sense of what it takes to put a good song together,” said Jim Ritson, owner of 4th Street Vine.

For now, Jordan will be preparing for his upcoming show at 4th Street Vine following his Fingerprints concert as he looks for Long Beach bands to join his fledgling record label.

Jordan also said he’s intent on accomplishing another life goal, and that’s making sure he doesn’t lose any more fingers so he doesn’t need a new stage name.

But he’ll need to be extra vigilant when it comes to that, since he’s already had another close call.

He recently sliced yet another finger with a kitchen knife.

“My wife just shook her head at me and said ‘That’s it, it’s going to be 7 Good Fingers; you’re going to have to redo the whole album cover,’ ” he recalled with a laugh.If You Go:

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